Effect: You riffle the deck and wait tell the spectator tells you to stop you stop and take away the upper portion. Then the pick the card up look at it then put it back. You square up the deck and riffle the deck to your ear. Then the deck tells you... Read more of Whispering Deck at Card Trick.ca

The Man Who Went Too Far

The little village of St. Faith's nestles in a hollow of wooded hill up
on the north bank of the river Fawn in the county of Hampshire huddling
close round its gray Norman church as if for spiritual protection
against the fays and fairies, the trolls and "little people," who might
be supposed still to linger in the vast empty spaces of the New Forest,
and to come after dusk and do their doubtful businesses. Once outside
the hamlet you may walk in any direction (so long as you avoid the high
road which leads to Brockenhurst) for the length of a summer afternoon
without seeing sign of human habitation, or possibly even catching
sight of another human being. Shaggy wild ponies may stop their feeding
for a moment as you pass, the white scuts of rabbits will vanish into
their burrows, a brown viper perhaps will glide from your path into a
clump of heather, and unseen birds will chuckle in the bushes, but it
may easily happen that for a long day you will see nothing human. But
you will not feel in the least lonely; in summer, at any rate, the
sunlight will be gay with butterflies, and the air thick with all those
woodland sounds which like instruments in an orchestra combine to play
the great symphony of the yearly festival of June. Winds whisper in the
birches and sigh among the firs; bees are busy with their irredolent
labor among the heather, a myriad birds chirp in the green temples of
the forest trees, and the voice of the river prattling over stony
places, bubbling into pools, chuckling and gulping round corners, gives
you the sense that many presences and companions are near at hand.

Yet, oddly enough, though one would have thought that these benign and
cheerful influences of wholesome air and spaciousness of forest were
very healthful comrades for a man, in so far as nature can really
influence this wonderful human genus which has in these centuries
learned to defy her most violent storms in its well-established houses,
to bridle her torrents and make them light its streets, to tunnel her
mountains and plough her seas, the inhabitants of St. Faith's will not
willingly venture into the forest after dark. For in spite of the
silence and loneliness of the hooded night it seems that a man is not
sure in what company he may suddenly find himself, and though it is
difficult to get from these villagers any very clear story of occult
appearances, the feeling is widespread. One story indeed I have heard
with some definiteness, the tale of a monstrous goat that has been seen
to skip with hellish glee about the woods and shady places, and this
perhaps is connected with the story which I have here attempted to
piece together. It too is well-known to them; for all remember the
young artist who died here not long ago, a young man, or so he struck
the beholder, of great personal beauty, with something about him that
made men's faces to smile and brighten when they looked on him. His
ghost they will tell you "walks" constantly by the stream and through
the woods which he loved so, and in especial it haunts a certain house,
the last of the village, where he lived, and its garden in which he was
done to death. For my part I am inclined to think that the terror of
the Forest dates chiefly from that day. So, such as the story is, I
have set it forth in connected form. It is based partly on the accounts
of the villagers, but mainly on that of Darcy, a friend of mine and a
friend of the man with whom these events were chiefly concerned.

* * * * *

The day had been one of untarnished midsummer splendour, and as the sun
drew near to its setting, the glory of the evening grew every moment
more crystalline, more miraculous. Westward from St. Faith's the
beechwood which stretched for some miles toward the heathery upland
beyond already cast its veil of clear shadow over the red roofs of the
village, but the spire of the gray church, overtopping all, still
pointed a flaming orange finger into the sky. The river Fawn, which
runs below, lay in sheets of sky-reflected blue, and wound its dreamy
devious course round the edge of this wood, where a rough two-planked
bridge crossed from the bottom of the garden of the last house in the
village, and communicated by means of a little wicker gate with the
wood itself. Then once out of the shadow of the wood the stream lay in
flaming pools of the molten crimson of the sunset, and lost itself in
the haze of woodland distances.

This house at the end of the village stood outside the shadow, and the
lawn which sloped down to the river was still flecked with sunlight.
Garden-beds of dazzling colour lined its gravel walks, and down the
middle of it ran a brick pergola, half-hidden in clusters of
rambler-rose and purple with starry clematis. At the bottom end of it,
between two of its pillars, was slung a hammock containing a shirt
sleeved figure.

The house itself lay somewhat remote from the rest of the village, and
a footpath leading across two fields, now tall and fragrant with hay,
was its only communication with the high road. It was low-built, only
two stories in height, and like the garden, its walls were a mass of
flowering roses. A narrow stone terrace ran along the garden front,
over which was stretched an awning, and on the terrace a young
silent-footed man-servant was busied with the laying of the table for
dinner. He was neat-handed and quick with his job, and having finished
it he went back into the house, and reappeared again with a large rough
bath-towel on his arm. With this he went to the hammock in the pergola.

"Nearly eight, sir," he said.

"Has Mr. Darcy come yet?" asked a voice from the hammock.

"No, sir."

"If I'm not back when he comes, tell him that I'm just having a bathe
before dinner."

The servant went back to the house, and after a moment or two Frank
Halton struggled to a sitting posture, and slipped out on to the grass.
He was of medium height and rather slender in build, but the supple
ease and grace of his movements gave the impression of great physical
strength: even his descent from the hammock was not an awkward
performance. His face and hands were of very dark complexion, either
from constant exposure to wind and sun, or, as his black hair and dark
eyes tended to show, from some strain of southern blood. His head was
small, his face of an exquisite beauty of modelling, while the
smoothness of its contour would have led you to believe that he was a
beardless lad still in his teens. But something, some look which living
and experience alone can give, seemed to contradict that, and finding
yourself completely puzzled as to his age, you would next moment
probably cease to think about that, and only look at this glorious
specimen of young manhood with wondering satisfaction.

He was dressed as became the season and the heat, and wore only a shirt
open at the neck, and a pair of flannel trousers. His head, covered
very thickly with a somewhat rebellious crop of short curly hair, was
bare as he strolled across the lawn to the bathing-place that lay
below. Then for a moment there was silence, then the sound of splashed
and divided waters, and presently after, a great shout of ecstatic joy,
as he swam up-stream with the foamed water standing in a frill round
his neck. Then after some five minutes of limb-stretching struggle with
the flood, he turned over on his back, and with arms thrown wide,
floated down-stream, ripple-cradled and inert. His eyes were shut, and
between half-parted lips he talked gently to himself.

"I am one with it," he said to himself, "the river and I, I and the
river. The coolness and splash of it is I, and the water-herbs that
wave in it are I also. And my strength and my limbs are not mine but
the river's. It is all one, all one, dear Fawn."

* * * * *

A quarter of an hour later he appeared again at the bottom of the lawn,
dressed as before, his wet hair already drying into its crisp short
curls again. Then he paused a moment, looking back at the stream with
the smile with which men look on the face of a friend, then turned
toward the house. Simultaneously his servant came to the door leading
on to the terrace, followed by a man who appeared to be some half-way

through the fourth decade of his years. Frank and he saw each other
across the bushes and garden-beds, and each quickening his step, they
met suddenly face to face round an angle of the garden walk, in the
fragrance of syringa.

"My dear Darcy," cried Frank, "I am charmed to see you."

But the other stared at him in amazement.

"Frank!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, that is my name," he said laughing, "what is the matter?"

Darcy took his hand.

"What have you done to yourself?" he asked. "You are a boy again."

"Ah, I have a lot to tell you," said Frank. "Lots that you will hardly
believe, but I shall convince you----"

He broke off suddenly, and held up his hand.

"Hush, there is my nightingale," he said.

The smile of recognition and welcome with which he had greeted his
friend faded from his face, and a look of rapt wonder took its place,
as of a lover listening to the voice of his beloved. His mouth parted
slightly, showing the white line of teeth, and his eyes looked out and
out till they seemed to Darcy to be focused on things beyond the vision
of man. Then something perhaps startled the bird, for the song ceased.

"Yes, lots to tell you," he said. "Really I am delighted to see you.
But you look rather white and pulled down; no wonder after that fever.
And there is to be no nonsense about this visit. It is June now, you
stop here till you are fit to begin work again. Two months at least."

"Ah, I can't trespass quite to that extent."

Frank took his arm and walked him down the grass.

"Trespass? Who talks of trespass? I shall tell you quite openly when I
am tired of you, but you know when we had the studio together, we used
not to bore each other. However, it is ill talking of going away on the
moment of your arrival. Just a stroll to the river, and then it will be
dinner-time."

Darcy took out his cigarette case, and offered it to the other.

Frank laughed.

"No, not for me. Dear me, I suppose I used to smoke once. How very
odd!"

"Given it up?"

"I don't know. I suppose I must have. Anyhow I don't do it now. I would
as soon think of eating meat."

"Another victim on the smoking altar of vegetarianism?"

"Victim?" asked Frank. "Do I strike you as such?"

He paused on the margin of the stream and whistled softly. Next moment
a moor-hen made its splashing flight across the river, and ran up the
bank. Frank took it very gently in his hands and stroked its head, as
the creature lay against his shirt.

"And is the house among the reeds still secure?" he half-crooned to it.
"And is the missus quite well, and are the neighbours flourishing?
There, dear, home with you," and he flung it into the air.

"That bird's very tame," said Darcy, slightly bewildered.

"It is rather," said Frank, following its flight.

* * * * *

During dinner Frank chiefly occupied himself in bringing himself
up-to-date in the movements and achievements of this old friend whom he
had not seen for six years. Those six years, it now appeared, had been
full of incident and success for Darcy; he had made a name for himself
as a portrait painter which bade fair to outlast the vogue of a couple
of seasons, and his leisure time had been brief. Then some four months
previously he had been through a severe attack of typhoid, the result
of which as concerns this story was that he had come down to this
sequestrated place to recruit.

"Yes, you've got on," said Frank at the end. "I always knew you would.
A.R.A. with more in prospect. Money? You roll in it, I suppose, and, O
Darcy, how much happiness have you had all these years? That is the
only imperishable possession. And how much have you learned? Oh, I
don't mean in Art. Even I could have done well in that."

Darcy laughed.

"Done well? My dear fellow, all I have learned in these six years you
knew, so to speak, in your cradle. Your old pictures fetch huge prices.
Do you never paint now?"

Frank shook his head.

"No, I'm too busy," he said.

"Doing what? Please tell me. That is what every one is for ever asking
me."

"Doing? I suppose you would say I do nothing."

Darcy glanced up at the brilliant young face opposite him.

"It seems to suit you, that way of being busy," he said. "Now, it's
your turn. Do you read? Do you study? I remember you saying that it
would do us all--all us artists, I mean--a great deal of good if we
would study any one human face carefully for a year, without recording
a line. Have you been doing that?"

Frank shook his head again.

"I mean exactly what I say," he said, "I have been doing nothing. And
I have never been so occupied. Look at me, have I not done something to
myself to begin with?"

"You are two years younger than I," said Darcy, "at least you used to
be. You therefore are thirty-five. But had I never seen you before I
should say you were just twenty. But was it worth while to spend six
years of greatly occupied life in order to look twenty? Seems rather
like a woman of fashion."

Frank laughed boisterously.

"First time I've ever been compared to that particular bird of prey,"
he said. "No, that has not been my occupation--in fact I am only very
rarely conscious that one effect of my occupation has been that. Of
course, it must have been if one comes to think of it. It is not very
important. Quite true my body has become young. But that is very
little; I have become young."

Darcy pushed back his chair and sat sideways to the table looking at
the other.

"Has that been your occupation then?" he asked. "Yes, that anyhow is
one aspect of it. Think what youth means! It is the capacity for
growth, mind, body, spirit, all grow, all get stronger, all have a
fuller, firmer life every day. That is something, considering that
every day that passed after the ordinary man reaches the full-blown
flower of his strength, weakens his hold on life. A man reaches his
prime, and remains, we say, in his prime, for ten years, or perhaps
twenty. But after his primest prime is reached, he slowly, insensibly
weakens. These are the signs of age in you, in your body, in your art
probably, in your mind. You are less electric than you were. But I,
when I reach my prime--I am nearing it--ah, you shall see."

The stars had begun to appear in the blue velvet of the sky, and to the
east the horizon seen above the black silhouette of the village was
growing dove-coloured with the approach of moon-rise. White moths
hovered dimly over the garden-beds, and the footsteps of night tip-toed
through the bushes. Suddenly Frank rose.

"Ah, it is the supreme moment," he said softly. "Now more than at any
other time the current of life, the eternal imperishable current runs
so close to me that I am almost enveloped in it. Be silent a minute."

He advanced to the edge of the terrace and looked out standing
stretched with arms outspread. Darcy heard him draw a long breath into
his lungs, and after many seconds expel it again. Six or eight times he
did this, then turned back into the lamplight.

"It will sound to you quite mad, I expect," he said, "but if you want
to hear the soberest truth I have ever spoken and shall ever speak, I
will tell you about myself. But come into the garden if it is not too
damp for you. I have never told anyone yet, but I shall like to tell
you. It is long, in fact, since I have even tried to classify what I
have learned."

They wandered into the fragrant dimness of the pergola, and sat down.
Then Frank began:

"Years ago, do you remember," he said, "we used often to talk about the
decay of joy in the world. Many impulses, we settled, had contributed
to this decay, some of which were good in themselves, others that were
quite completely bad. Among the good things, I put what we may call
certain Christian virtues, renunciation, resignation, sympathy with
suffering, and the desire to relieve sufferers. But out of those things
spring very bad ones, useless renunciations, asceticism for its own
sake, mortification of the flesh with nothing to follow, no
corresponding gain that is, and that awful and terrible disease which
devastated England some centuries ago, and from which by heredity of
spirit we suffer now, Puritanism. That was a dreadful plague, the
brutes held and taught that joy and laughter and merriment were evil:
it was a doctrine the most profane and wicked. Why, what is the
commonest crime one sees? A sullen face. That is the truth of the
matter.

"Now all my life I have believed that we are intended to be happy, that
joy is of all gifts the most divine. And when I left London, abandoned
my career, such as it was, I did so because I intended to devote my
life to the cultivation of joy, and, by continuous and unsparing
effort, to be happy. Among people, and in constant intercourse with
others, I did not find it possible; there were too many distractions in
towns and work-rooms, and also too much suffering. So I took one step
backward or forward, as you may choose to put it, and went straight to
Nature, to trees, birds, animals, to all those things which quite
clearly pursue one aim only, which blindly follow the great native
instinct to be happy without any care at all for morality, or human law
or divine law. I wanted, you understand, to get all joy first-hand and
unadulterated, and I think it scarcely exists among men; it is
obsolete."

Darcy turned in his chair.

"Ah, but what makes birds and animals happy?" he asked. "Food, food and
mating."

Frank laughed gently in the stillness.

"Do not think I became a sensualist," he said. "I did not make that
mistake. For the sensualist carries his miseries pick-a-back, and round
his feet is wound the shroud that shall soon enwrap him. I may be mad,
it is true, but I am not so stupid anyhow as to have tried that. No,
what is it that makes puppies play with their own tails, that sends
cats on their prowling ecstatic errands at night?"

He paused a moment.

"So I went to Nature," he said. "I sat down here in this New Forest,
sat down fair and square, and looked. That was my first difficulty, to
sit here quiet without being bored, to wait without being impatient, to
be receptive and very alert, though for a long time nothing particular
happened. The change in fact was slow in those early stages."

"Nothing happened?" asked Darcy rather impatiently, with the sturdy
revolt against any new idea which to the English mind is synonymous
with nonsense. "Why, what in the world should happen?"

Now Frank as he had known him was the most generous, most
quick-tempered of mortal men; in other words his anger would flare to a
prodigious beacon, under almost no provocation, only to be quenched
again under a gust of no less impulsive kindliness. Thus the moment
Darcy had spoken, an apology for his hasty question was half-way up his
tongue. But there was no need for it to have travelled even so far, for
Frank laughed again with kindly, genuine mirth.

"Oh, how I should have resented that a few years ago," he said. "Thank
goodness that resentment is one of the things I have got rid of. I
certainly wish that you should believe my story--in fact, you are going
to--but that you at this moment should imply that you do not, does not
concern me."

"Ah, your solitary sojournings have made you inhuman," said Darcy,
still very English.

"No, human," said Frank. "Rather more human, at least rather less of an
ape."

"Well, that was my first quest," he continued, after a moment, "the
deliberate and unswerving pursuit of joy, and my method, the eager
contemplation of Nature. As far as motive went, I dare say it was
purely selfish, but as far as effect goes, it seems to me about the
best thing one can do for one's fellow-creatures, for happiness is more
infectious than small-pox. So, as I said, I sat down and waited; I
looked at happy things, zealously avoided the sight of anything
unhappy, and by degrees a little trickle of the happiness of this
blissful world began to filter into me. The trickle grew more abundant,
and now, my dear fellow, if I could for a moment divert from me into
you one half of the torrent of joy that pours through me day and night,
you would throw the world, art, everything aside, and just live, exist.
When a man's body dies, it passes into trees and flowers. Well, that is
what I have been trying to do with my soul before death."

The servant had brought into the pergola a table with syphons and
spirits, and had set a lamp upon it. As Frank spoke he leaned forward
toward the other, and Darcy for all his matter-of-fact common-sense
could have sworn that his companion's face shone, was luminous in
itself. His dark brown eyes glowed from within, the unconscious smile
of a child irradiated and transformed his face. Darcy felt suddenly
excited, exhilarated.

"Go on," he said. "Go on. I can feel you are somehow telling me sober
truth. I dare say you are mad; but I don't see that matters."

Frank laughed again.

"Mad?" he said. "Yes, certainly, if you wish. But I prefer to call it
sane. However, nothing matters less than what anybody chooses to call
things. God never labels his gifts; He just puts them into our hands;
just as he put animals in the garden of Eden, for Adam to name if he
felt disposed."

"So by the continual observance and study of things that were happy,"
continued he, "I got happiness, I got joy. But seeking it, as I did,
from Nature, I got much more which I did not seek, but stumbled upon
originally by accident. It is difficult to explain, but I will try.

"About three years ago I was sitting one morning in a place I will show
you to-morrow. It is down by the river brink, very green, dappled with
shade and sun, and the river passes there through some little clumps of
reeds. Well, as I sat there, doing nothing, but just looking and
listening, I heard the sound quite distinctly of some flute-like
instrument playing a strange unending melody. I thought at first it was
some musical yokel on the highway and did not pay much attention. But
before long the strangeness and indescribable beauty of the tune struck
me. It never repeated itself, but it never came to an end, phrase after
phrase ran its sweet course, it worked gradually and inevitably up to a
climax, and having attained it, it went on; another climax was reached
and another and another. Then with a sudden gasp of wonder I localized
where it came from. It came from the reeds and from the sky and from
the trees. It was everywhere, it was the sound of life. It was, my dear
Darcy, as the Greeks would have said, it was Pan playing on his pipes,
the voice of Nature. It was the life-melody, the world-melody."

Darcy was far too interested to interrupt, though there was a question
he would have liked to ask, and Frank went on:

"Well, for the moment I was terrified, terrified with the impotent
horror of nightmare, and I stopped my ears and just ran from the place
and got back to the house panting, trembling, literally in a panic.
Unknowingly, for at that time I only pursued joy, I had begun, since I
drew my joy from Nature, to get in touch with Nature. Nature, force,
God, call it what you will, had drawn across my face a little gossamer
web of essential life. I saw that when I emerged from my terror, and I
went very humbly back to where I had heard the Pan-pipes. But it was
nearly six months before I heard them again."

"Why was that?" asked Darcy.

"Surely because I had revolted, rebelled, and worst of all been
frightened. For I believe that just as there is nothing in the world
which so injures one's body as fear, so there is nothing that so much
shuts up the soul. I was afraid, you see, of the one thing in the world
which has real existence. No wonder its manifestation was withdrawn."

"And after six months?"

"After six months one blessed morning I heard the piping again. I
wasn't afraid that time. And since then it has grown louder, it has
become more constant. I now hear it often, and I can put myself into
such an attitude toward Nature that the pipes will almost certainly
sound. And never yet have they played the same tune, it is always
something new, something fuller, richer, more complete than before."

"What do you mean by 'such an attitude toward nature'?" asked Darcy.

"I can't explain that; but by translating it into a bodily attitude it
is this."

Frank sat up for a moment quite straight in his chair, then slowly sank
back with arms outspread and head drooped.

"That," he said, "an effortless attitude, but open, resting, receptive.
It is just that which you must do with your soul."

Then he sat up again.

"One word more," he said, "and I will bore you no further. Nor unless
you ask me questions shall I talk about it again. You will find me, in
fact, quite sane in my mode of life. Birds and beasts you will see
behaving somewhat intimately to me, like that moor-hen, but that is
all. I will walk with you, ride with you, play golf with you, and talk
with you on any subject you like. But I wanted you on the threshold to
know what has happened to me. And one thing more will happen."

He paused again, and a slight look of fear crossed his eyes.

"There will be a final revelation," he said, "a complete and blinding
stroke which will throw open to me, once and for all, the full
knowledge, the full realization and comprehension that I am one, just
as you are, with life. In reality there is no 'me,' no 'you,' no 'it.'
Everything is part of the one and only thing which is life. I know that
that is so, but the realization of it is not yet mine. But it will be,
and on that day, so I take it, I shall see Pan. It may mean death, the
death of my body, that is, but I don't care. It may mean immortal,
eternal life lived here and now and for ever. Then having gained that,
ah, my dear Darcy, I shall preach such a gospel of joy, showing myself
as the living proof of the truth, that Puritanism, the dismal religion
of sour faces, shall vanish like a breath of smoke, and be dispersed
and disappear in the sunlit air. But first the full knowledge must be
mine."

Darcy watched his face narrowly.

"You are afraid of that moment," he said.

Frank smiled at him.

"Quite true; you are quick to have seen that. But when it comes I hope
I shall not be afraid."

For some little time there was silence; then Darcy rose.

"You have bewitched me, you extraordinary boy," he said. "You have been
telling me a fairy-story, and I find myself saying, 'Promise me it is
true.'"

"I promise you that," said the other.

"And I know I sha'n't sleep," added Darcy.

Frank looked at him with a sort of mild wonder as if he scarcely
understood.

"Well, what does that matter?" he said.

"I assure you it does. I am wretched unless I sleep."

"Of course I can make you sleep if I want," said Frank in a rather
bored voice.

"Well, do."

"Very good: go to bed. I'll come upstairs in ten minutes."

Frank busied himself for a little after the other had gone, moving the
table back under the awning of the veranda and quenching the lamp. Then
he went with his quick silent tread upstairs and into Darcy's room. The
latter was already in bed, but very wide-eyed and wakeful, and Frank
with an amused smile of indulgence, as for a fretful child, sat down on
the edge of the bed.

"Look at me," he said, and Darcy looked.

"The birds are sleeping in the brake," said Frank softly, "and the
winds are asleep. The sea sleeps, and the tides are but the heaving of
its breast. The stars swing slow, rocked in the great cradle of the
Heavens, and----"

He stopped suddenly, gently blew out Darcy's candle, and left him
sleeping.

Morning brought to Darcy a flood of hard commonsense, as clear and
crisp as the sunshine that filled his room. Slowly as he woke he
gathered together the broken threads of the memories of the evening
which had ended, so he told himself, in a trick of common hypnotism.
That accounted for it all; the whole strange talk he had had was under
a spell of suggestion from the extraordinary vivid boy who had once
been a man; all his own excitement, his acceptance of the incredible
had been merely the effect of a stronger, more potent will imposed on
his own. How strong that will was he guessed from his own instantaneous
obedience to Frank's suggestion of sleep. And armed with impenetrable
commonsense he came down to breakfast. Frank had already begun, and was
consuming a large plateful of porridge and milk with the most prosaic
and healthy appetite.

"Slept well?" he asked.

"Yes, of course. Where did you learn hypnotism?"

"By the side of the river."

"You talked an amazing quantity of nonsense last night," remarked
Darcy, in a voice prickly with reason.

"Rather. I felt quite giddy. Look, I remembered to order a dreadful
daily paper for you. You can read about money markets or politics or
cricket matches."

Darcy looked at him closely. In the morning light Frank looked even
fresher, younger, more vital than he had done the night before, and the
sight of him somehow dinted Darcy's armour of commonsense.

"You are the most extraordinary fellow I ever saw," he said. "I want to
ask you some more questions."

"Ask away," said Frank.

* * * * *

For the next day or two Darcy plied his friend with many questions,
objections and criticisms on the theory of life and gradually got out
of him a coherent and complete account of his experience. In brief
then, Frank believed that "by lying naked," as he put it, to the force
which controls the passage of the stars, the breaking of a wave, the
budding of a tree, the love of a youth and maiden, he had succeeded in
a way hitherto undreamed of in possessing himself of the essential
principle of life. Day by day, so he thought, he was getting nearer to,
and in closer union with the great power itself which caused all life
to be, the spirit of nature, of force, or the spirit of God. For
himself, he confessed to what others would call paganism; it was
sufficient for him that there existed a principle of life. He did not
worship it, he did not pray to it, he did not praise it. Some of it
existed in all human beings, just as it existed in trees and animals;
to realize and make living to himself the fact that it was all one, was
his sole aim and object.

Here perhaps Darcy would put in a word of warning.

"Take care," he said. "To see Pan meant death, did it not?"

Frank's eyebrows would rise at this.

"What does that matter?" he said. "True the Greeks were always right,
and they said so, but there is another possibility. For the nearer I
get to it, the more living, the more vital and young I become."

"What then do you expect the final revelation will do for you?"

"I have told you," said he. "It will make me immortal."

But it was not so much from speech and argument that Darcy grew to
grasp his friend's conception as from the ordinary conduct of his life.
They were passing, for instance, one morning down the village street,
when an old woman, very bent and decrepit but with an extraordinary
cheerfulness of face, hobbled out from her cottage. Frank instantly
stopped when he saw her.

"You old darling! How goes it all?" he said.

But she did not answer, her dim old eyes were riveted on his face; she
seemed to drink in like a thirsty creature the beautiful radiance which
shone there. Suddenly she put her two withered old hands on his
shoulders.

"You're just the sunshine itself," she said, and he kissed her and
passed on.

But scarcely a hundred yards further a strange contradiction of such
tenderness occurred. A child running along the path toward them fell on
its face, and set up a dismal cry of fright and pain. A look of horror
came into Frank's eyes, and, putting his fingers in his ears, he fled
at full speed down the street and did not pause till he was out of
hearing. Darcy, having ascertained that the child was not really hurt,
followed him in bewilderment.

"Are you without pity then?" he asked.

Frank shook his head impatiently.

"Can't you see?" he asked. "Can't you understand that that sort of
thing, pain, anger, anything unlovely throws me back, retards the
coming of the great hour! Perhaps when it comes I shall be able to
piece that side of life on to the other, on to the true religion of
joy. At present I can't."

"But the old woman. Was she not ugly?"

Frank's radiance gradually returned.

"Ah, no. She was like me. She longed for joy, and knew it when she saw
it, the old darling."

Another question suggested itself.

"Then what about Christianity?" asked Darcy.

"I can't accept it. I can't believe in any creed of which the central
doctrine is that God who is Joy should have had to suffer. Perhaps it
was so; in some inscrutable way I believe it may have been so, but I
don't understand how it was possible. So I leave it alone; my affair is
joy."

They had come to the weir above the village, and the thunder of riotous
cool water was heavy in the air. Trees dipped into the translucent
stream with slender trailing branches, and the meadow where they stood
was starred with midsummer blossomings. Larks shot up caroling into the
crystal dome of blue, and a thousand voices of June sang round them.
Frank, bare-headed as was his wont, with his coat slung over his arm
and his shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow, stood there like some
beautiful wild animal with eyes half-shut and mouth half-open, drinking
in the scented warmth of the air. Then suddenly he flung himself face
downward on the grass at the edge of the stream, burying his face in
the daisies and cowslips, and lay stretched there in wide-armed
ecstasy, with his long fingers pressing and stroking the dewy herbs of
the field. Never before had Darcy seen him thus fully possessed by his
idea; his caressing fingers, his half-buried face pressed close to the
grass, even the clothed lines of his figure were instinct with a
vitality that somehow was different from that of other men. And some
faint glow from it reached Darcy, some thrill, some vibration from that
charged recumbent body passed to him, and for a moment he understood as
he had not understood before, despite his persistent questions and the
candid answers they received, how real, and how realized by Frank, his
idea was.

Then suddenly the muscles in Frank's neck became stiff and alert, and
he half-raised his head, whispering, "The Pan-pipes, the Pan-pipes.
Close, oh, so close."

Very slowly, as if a sudden movement might interrupt the melody, he
raised himself and leaned on the elbow of his bent arm. His eyes opened
wider, the lower lids drooped as if he focused his eyes on something
very far away, and the smile on his face broadened and quivered like
sunlight on still water till the exultance of its happiness was
scarcely human. So he remained, motionless and rapt for some minutes,
then the look of listening died from his face, and he bowed his head
satisfied.

"Ah, that was good," he said. "How is it possible you did not hear? Oh,
you poor fellow! Did you really hear nothing?"

A week of this outdoor and stimulating life did wonders in restoring to
Darcy the vigour and health which his weeks of fever had filched from
him, and as his normal activity and higher pressure of vitality
returned, he seemed to himself to fall even more under the spell which
the miracle of Frank's youth cast over him. Twenty times a day he found
himself saying to himself suddenly at the end of some ten minutes'
silent resistance to the absurdity of Frank's idea: "But it isn't
possible; it can't be possible," and from the fact of his having to
assure himself so frequently of this, he knew that he was struggling
and arguing with a conclusion which already had taken root in his mind.
For in any case a visible living miracle confronted him, since it was
equally impossible that this youth, this boy, trembling on the verge of
manhood, was thirty-five. Yet such was the fact.

July was ushered in by a couple of days of blustering and fretful rain,
and Darcy, unwilling to risk a chill, kept to the house. But to Frank
this weeping change of weather seemed to have no bearing on the
behaviour of man, and he spent his days exactly as he did under the
suns of June, lying in his hammock, stretched on the dripping grass, or
making huge rambling excursions into the forest, the birds hopping from
tree to tree after him, to return in the evening, drenched and soaked,
but with the same unquenchable flame of joy burning within him.

"Catch cold?" he would ask, "I've forgotten how to do it, I think. I
suppose it makes one's body more sensible always to sleep out-of-doors.
People who live indoors always remind me of something peeled and
skinless."

"Do you mean to say you slept out-of-doors last night in that deluge?"
asked Darcy. "And where, may I ask?"

Frank thought a moment.

"I slept in the hammock till nearly dawn," he said. "For I remember the
light blinked in the east when I awoke. Then I went--where did I
go?--oh, yes, to the meadow where the Pan-pipes sounded so close a week
ago. You were with me, do you remember? But I always have a rug if it
is wet."

And he went whistling upstairs.

Somehow that little touch, his obvious effort to recall where he had
slept, brought strangely home to Darcy the wonderful romance of which
he was the still half-incredulous beholder. Sleep till close on dawn in
a hammock, then the tramp--or probably scamper--underneath the windy
and weeping heavens to the remote and lonely meadow by the weir! The
picture of other such nights rose before him; Frank sleeping perhaps by
the bathing-place under the filtered twilight of the stars, or the
white blaze of moonshine, a stir and awakening at some dead hour,
perhaps a space of silent wide-eyed thought, and then a wandering
through the hushed woods to some other dormitory, alone with his
happiness, alone with the joy and the life that suffused and enveloped
him, without other thought or desire or aim except the hourly and
never-ceasing communion with the joy of nature.

They were in the middle of dinner that night, talking on indifferent
subjects, when Darcy suddenly broke off in the middle of a sentence.

"I've got it," he said. "At last I've got it."

"Congratulate you," said Frank. "But what?"

"The radical unsoundness of your idea. It is this: All nature from
highest to lowest is full, crammed full of suffering; every living
organism in nature preys on another, yet in your aim to get close to,
to be one with nature, you leave suffering altogether out; you run away
from it, you refuse to recognize it. And you are waiting, you say, for
the final revelation."

Frank's brow clouded slightly.

"Well," he asked, rather wearily.

"Cannot you guess then when the final revelation will be? In joy you
are supreme, I grant you that; I did not know a man could be so master
of it. You have learned perhaps practically all that nature can teach.
And if, as you think, the final revelation is coming to you, it will be
the revelation of horror, suffering, death, pain in all its hideous
forms. Suffering does exist: you hate it and fear it."

Frank held up his hand.

"Stop; let me think," he said.

There was silence for a long minute.

"That never struck me," he said at length. "It is possible that what
you suggest is true. Does the sight of Pan mean that, do you think? Is
it that nature, take it altogether, suffers horribly, suffers to a
hideous inconceivable extent? Shall I be shown all the suffering?"

He got up and came round to where Darcy sat.

"If it is so, so be it," he said. "Because, my dear fellow, I am near,
so splendidly near to the final revelation. To-day the pipes have
sounded almost without pause. I have even heard the rustle in the
bushes, I believe, of Pan's coming. I have seen, yes, I saw to-day, the
bushes pushed aside as if by a hand, and piece of a face, not human,
peered through. But I was not frightened, at least I did not run away
this time."

He took a turn up to the window and back again.

"Yes, there is suffering all through," he said, "and I have left it all
out of my search. Perhaps, as you say, the revelation will be that. And
in that case, it will be good-bye. I have gone on one line. I shall
have gone too far along one road, without having explored the other.
But I can't go back now. I wouldn't if I could; not a step would I
retrace! In any case, whatever the revelation is, it will be God. I'm
sure of that."

* * * * *

The rainy weather soon passed, and with the return of the sun Darcy
again joined Frank in long rambling days. It grew extraordinarily
hotter, and with the fresh bursting of life, after the rain, Frank's
vitality seemed to blaze higher and higher. Then, as is the habit of
the English weather, one evening clouds began to bank themselves up in
the west, the sun went down in a glare of coppery thunder-rack, and the
whole earth broiling under an unspeakable oppression and sultriness
paused and panted for the storm. After sunset the remote fires of
lightning began to wink and flicker on the horizon, but when bed-time
came the storm seemed to have moved no nearer, though a very low
unceasing noise of thunder was audible. Weary and oppressed by the
stress of the day, Darcy fell at once into a heavy uncomforting sleep.

He woke suddenly into full consciousness, with the din of some
appalling explosion of thunder in his ears, and sat up in bed with
racing heart. Then for a moment, as he recovered himself from the
panic-land which lies between sleeping and waking, there was silence,
except for the steady hissing of rain on the shrubs outside his window.
But suddenly that silence was shattered and shredded into fragments by
a scream from somewhere close at hand outside in the black garden, a
scream of supreme and despairing terror. Again and once again it
shrilled up, and then a babble of awful words was interjected. A
quivering sobbing voice that he knew, said:

"My God, oh, my God; oh, Christ!"

And then followed a little mocking, bleating laugh. Then was silence
again; only the rain hissed on the shrubs.

All this was but the affair of a moment, and without pause either to
put on clothes or light a candle, Darcy was already fumbling at his
door-handle. Even as he opened it he met a terror-stricken face
outside, that of the man-servant who carried a light.

"Did you hear?" he asked.

The man's face was bleached to a dull shining whiteness.

"Yes, sir," he said. "It was the master's voice."

* * * * *

Together they hurried down the stairs, and through the dining-room
where an orderly table for breakfast had already been laid, and out on
to the terrace. The rain for the moment had been utterly stayed, as if
the tap of the heavens had been turned off, and under the lowering
black sky, not quite dark, since the moon rode somewhere serene behind
the conglomerated thunder-clouds, Darcy stumbled into the garden,
followed by the servant with the candle. The monstrous leaping shadow
of himself was cast before him on the lawn; lost and wandering odours
of rose and lily and damp earth were thick about him, but more pungent
was some sharp and acrid smell that suddenly reminded him of a certain
chalet in which he had once taken refuge in the Alps. In the blackness
of the hazy light from the sky, and the vague tossing of the candle
behind him, he saw that the hammock in which Frank so often lay was
tenanted. A gleam of white shirt was there, as if a man sitting up in
it, but across that there was an obscure dark shadow, and as he
approached the acrid odour grew more intense.

He was now only some few yards away, when suddenly the black shadow
seemed to jump into the air, then came down with tappings of hard hoofs
on the brick path that ran down the pergola, and with frolicsome
skippings galloped off into the bushes. When that was gone Darcy could
see quite clearly that a shirted figure sat up in the hammock. For one
moment, from sheer terror of the unseen, he hung on his step, and the
servant joining him they walked together to the hammock.

It was Frank. He was in shirt and trousers only, and he sat up with
braced arms. For one half second he stared at them, his face a mask of
horrible contorted terror. His upper lip was drawn back so that the
gums of the teeth appeared, and his eyes were focused not on the two
who approached him but on something quite close to him; his nostrils
were widely expanded, as if he panted for breath, and terror incarnate
and repulsion and deathly anguish ruled dreadful lines on his smooth
cheeks and forehead. Then even as they looked the body sank backward,
and the ropes of the hammock wheezed and strained.

Darcy lifted him out and carried him indoors. Once he thought there was
a faint convulsive stir of the limbs that lay with so dead a weight in
his arms, but when they got inside there was no trace of life. But the
look of supreme terror and agony of fear had gone from his face, a boy
tired with play but still smiling in his sleep was the burden he laid
on the floor. His eyes closed, and the beautiful mouth lay in smiling
curves, even as when a few mornings ago, in the meadow by the weir, it
had quivered to the music of the unheard melody of Pan's pipes. Then
they looked further.

Frank had come back from his bath before dinner that night in his usual
costume of shirt and trousers only. He had not dressed, and during
dinner, so Darcy remembered, he had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt
to above the elbow. Later, as they sat and talked after dinner on the
close sultriness of the evening, he had unbuttoned the front of his
shirt to let what little breath of wind there was play on his skin. The
sleeves were rolled up now, the front of the shirt was unbuttoned, and
on his arms and on the brown skin of his chest were strange
discolorations which grew momently more clear and defined, till they
saw that the marks were pointed prints, as if caused by the hoofs of
some monstrous goat that had leaped and stamped upon him.